


and my boat so small

by the-tzimisce (firstmaterial)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Sacrifice, faith - Freeform, man's insignificance in the universe, monster friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22244419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstmaterial/pseuds/the-tzimisce
Summary: Peter finds his god in the water. (Vast!Peter fic)
Relationships: Peter Lukas & The Vast, Simon Fairchild & Peter Lukas
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85





	and my boat so small

“You think this will be enough?” Peter asks.

Simon bares his teeth in a grin. “Don’t ask me,” he says. “It’s your god.”

It literally isn’t, which is the entire reason they’re here. Peter thinks his incredulity must have shown on his face - which Simon would say was “learning,” if they had any more time for that sort of thing - because Simon bursts into cackles and jumps down to the _Tundra_ ’s deck alongside him.

“No, no, I like it,” he says. “Very personal, very poetic, which I suppose is a sacrifice in itself for a Lukas. If it were me judging, you’d be set.” He casts his eyes to the cloudless expanse of sky, stretching to meet the sea in every direction. “Well, who knows what’s doing the judging, in the end. But you know how it works. It’s your fear. I can’t tell how you feel it.” Simon lays a hand on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter flinches and shifts but lets him. “So like I said, it’s _your god_. How do _you_ feel?”

“Oh! Well, I’m terrified,” Peter says brightly, and Simon hmmms and leans against a shipping container, patient. Often he knows better than Peter himself when Peter has something more to say. The creature Peter is can’t hang onto the words, fishes them out and then jettisons them again when his instincts can no longer bear the threat of _communication_. Even standing here under the sky and Simon’s eye, knowing what’s at stake, is wearing on him. His very body and bone tell him he belongs in his cabin, watching the sea made very small in his own private window. 

The sea, though, tells him otherwise.

It’s never been easy for him to talk about faith, because faith is just for yourself, alone, and the thing that’s reluctantly swelled alongside it is so much more than just-himself could carry. But he feels the _Tundra_ tip beneath him as a ship her size never would on calm seas, the ocean stretching out beneath him, as close under his feet as though the great steel plates of her hull were tissue paper. Guiding her, and Peter, gently, down.

“It’s right,” he says. “What that means to Too-Great-I-Am-Nothing, I…I can’t tell if I’m being sheltered, or just, consumed. The sea, it, I’m not sure there’s really a difference. To it. All the ships that have ever been swallowed by the ocean unnoticed, I’m not different. But it’s right for me to do this.” He almost loses the thought, has to turn his head aside and say it into the wall of a container. “ I _want_ to do it.”

(When he had come to Forsaken, his uncle had led him beneath the house. His cousin whispered the rudiments of understanding the Lukases shared of their god - the most he had been spoken to in his life. His mother barred the door. He had emerged alone, of course, with a fresh blank territory inside his heart that sang to find his family nowhere to be found. But the fact remains that for all of Simon’s nudging he’s been more alone coming to this decision than he ever was in joining the Lonely.)

Simon laughs again, which Peter has become enough accustomed to that he doesn’t try to understand why. “Look lively, boy! It’s not like you’re going to your death, I mean, except other than literally. I wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to feed you to the Vast myself.”

“You would,” Peter says.

“Okay, sure, I would. But I’m not.” Simon narrows his eyes, actually looks at Peter in a way that sets all his instincts screaming for solitude. He ignores both the look and the instincts.

“You know you can’t go back to _that_ god, yes? Not after cutting it away like this. Whatever joy you find in loneliness now, you try to find it again and you’ll just be alone.”

Peter nods. The thought of being cut off even from his god has a familiar comfort to it, now. He knows that soon it won’t. He can’t tell, yet, if it will be...something else. A relief, maybe, or a torment. He doesn’t know which he hopes for.

That seems to satisfy Simon, because he nods back and turns to go. “Give me an hour or two,” he says. “I’m guessing you still want a little time alone, anyway.”

“Simon,” he calls out again as the man clambers up the side of his ship, but when he tries to speak further his words drop from existence before reaching his lips. Simon does turn, though, and wait to see if he continues, and there’s a comfort in that that makes him feel sick and lost until he relents and waves him away again.

Simon’s smile when he takes something seriously is like cold, clear sunlight. “You can tell me all about it on the other side,” he says. “Until then, tell it to the sea.”

He flips gracefully off the edge, and leaves Peter in silence.

A flurry of activity passes over Simon’s little ship, and she starts to pull away from alongside. Peter watches until he sees divers hit the water.

He offers one last sacrifice to Forsaken, then: he imagines the faces of his family, when they hear. Nathaniel cold and disappointed, Conrad acerbic in his dismissal, his mother...acknowledging. In his mind he sees her listen the news of her son’s betrayal as though she were hearing a servant call her to dinner, thanking them coolly and turning aside without the twitch of a muscle. He tries to imagine it differently - it’s not like he knows her, after all - but he can’t think what it would look like. He can’t remember ever seeing his presence change her reaction.

There’s still a comfort in understanding how utterly alone he is. A comfort like the warmth of fingers turning to frostbite. It is the last thing he will ever offer his god.

When he feels the first charge rock through the _Tundra_ ’s hull, Peter climbs. Around him his crew rushes to their stations, preparing for emergency and then all too quickly giving way to panic as the ship jolts again and again as the sea rushes in to claim her. Eyes slide over him as always as he slips past, and with the captain missing the order to evacuate comes later than it should. He hears someone shout for help into the radio, and a buzzing static in response. Then he reaches the catwalk, climbs into the open air, and waits for the sea to rise.

Simon was thorough. The ship sinks faster than he could have imagined, and what lifeboats do escape are tossed on waves that rise with impossible violence from the still, clear day. Simon’s little boat is a speck on the horizon, and by the time any other ship can reach them there will be only empty water, even her remains lost to the depthless expanse below. Whatever might become of _his_ sacrifice, his ship and her crew belong to the Endless Deep.

Peter loves the _Tundra_ like little else in the world. The pain of her ruin is sharp and close in a way he’s never known before. And even as his chest seizes with it, as he clings in desperation to her last remaining pieces he sees the water stretch before him and finds his grief has no significance at all.

The sea has swallowed so many ships, after all. He’s no different.

The sky doesn’t even meet the sea at the horizon. It just goes on, as the sea does, as though there were no globe at all but only a flat plain of air and water through which all existence falls. That the wreckage of his ship even registers, that _he_ registers in his own perceptions all of a sudden seems absurd when he can raise his eyes and look into empty infinity in every direction, and it occurs to him then that he’s more alone than he’s ever been. And that that, in the end, means nothing at all. The whole human race might be drowning here with him and they might ( _he_ might?) take their tiny comfort in the warmth of one another and it will be of no more significance, will vanish as readily as he alone in the endless inevitable water.

 _Tell it to the sea_ , Simon had said, and Peter has never been one for words even to himself but that’s fine because all the words ever put together have already been swallowed by the water and lost. But he hears himself laughing as the water climbs past his waist, because it also doesn’t matter if he does try, he _wants_ to try, wants to give one last meaningless thing to the sea before all he has to give is himself. “Everything seemed so small,” he manages, and the water around his chest makes his lungs flutter and steals the words. “When the sea was always so wide.” The water lowers him down, as infinite below him as it is around him, and all he knows is that he will sink forever and that he can’t begin to understand what that means and that he wants it in a way he’s never known wanting before.

“I’m coming home,” he says, and then there’s nothing but the sea.

(Later, Peter will find himself in a port he doesn’t recognize, and passersby will meet his eyes and drown in them. When he recovers from both of these shocks, he’ll feel a rush of panic, helpless without his ship or his money, and then once he realizes it’s so simple that it arrests him in his tracks: he’s not alone.)

(Eventually he’ll manage to borrow a phone, whose owner will promptly run in terror from a tidal wave that covers the sun. When Simon picks up, he still won’t know what he’s supposed to say. But Simon will recognize the silence on the end of the line - will be _waiting_ for him, and he’ll laugh and shepherd Peter through some inane and bizarrely comforting greeting, and finally exclaim, “Well, didn’t I tell you! Much more fun like this, no?”)

(“Yeah,” Peter will say. “Guess you win this one.” And he’ll smile, and stay on the line.)


End file.
